By Tom Siebert
I am the least objective reviewer of a Bob Dylan concert, having devoted endless hours listening to his genius music since college days, having literally lived for his next album, and having now seen him live for the fifth time Wednesday night, along with nearly 4,000 faithful fans at the landmark Auditorium Theater in downtown Chicago.
The Shakespeare of song, who began this so-called Never Ending Tour in 1988, was forced to cancel its Japan dates in March 2020 due to the pandemic, but resumed it last Tuesday night in Milwaukee.
Mr. Dylan and his five-member band opened the Chicago show with "Watching the River Flow," a rollicking romp from 1971 whose lyrics perfectly describe our nation's current cold Civil War.
People disagreeing on just about everything
Makes you stop and all wonder why
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
Who just couldn't help but cry
The similarly sign-of-the-times follow-up was the marching band boogie "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" from the classic 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.
One of Bob's many lost-love songs, he slowed down the tempo as if to comment on our conspiracy-crazed country:
You say you're sorry
For tellin' stories
That you know I believe are true
But despite the first two dusted-off numbers, this was no nostalgia nor greatest hits concert. Mr. Dylan and his band decidedly did not play "Like a Rolling Stone," which Rolling Stone magazine twice listed as number one among the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Nor did he perform "Blowing in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changing," which became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s.
And no longer does Bob the bard play in sold-out sports stadiums, where critics and fans alike would complain that his serrated vocals were indecipherable and his rearranged instrumentations turned every concert into the gameshow "Name That Tune."
No, that was not the showcase at the ornate Auditorium Theater, which was built in 1889 and owned since 1946 by nearby Roosevelt University. The Romanesque concert hall, a venerable venue for everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to The Doors, has been renovated many times over to acoustical perfection.
The Baby Boomer-heavy audience, which included some Dylan devotees in their 20s and 30s, was completely locked in as the folk-rock poet went on to perform 16 more clearly enunciated songs, most of them from his highly praised 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways, for which the tour has been renamed and billed to continue until 2024, according to concert posters plastered over venues at the next 19 U.S. dates through Dec. 2.
The initial new song was the introspective "I Contain Multitudes," demonstrating that the master still has the best words:
I'm just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again
Next up was the stomping blues-rocker "False Prophet," featuring the brilliant interplay of guitarists Doug Lancio and Bob Britt as well as the solid bass work of Tony Garnier, stellar steel pedal of Donnie Herron, and understated drumming of Charley Drayton.
It would be easy to say that this is the best ensemble of musicians that Dylan has ever had accompanying him, unless one forgets that his previous back-up players have included Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and The Band itself.
And speaking of prophets, Dylan had often been called one, that is, until the late 1970s and early 1980s when he was de-canonized for declaring himself a born-again Christian and putting out three contemporary gospel albums.
He later returned to secular songs, albeit some with continued biblical and apocalyptic imagery, and saying that the healing power of music itself was his guiding spiritual source.
At Wednesday night's show, Bob introduced practically all-new lyrics to "Gotta Serve Somebody" from the 1979 album Slow Train Coming, both Grammy Award winners. But he pointedly kept in the convicting chorus, suggesting that he is still a believer of some sort.
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
Yes, indeed, you're gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody
For the record, Mr. Dylan has sold more than 125 million of them, won ten Grammys, and been awarded an Oscar, Golden Globe, Kennedy Center Honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Pulitzer Prize citation, and 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
"When I Paint My Masterpiece" from 1971 was a fitting song choice for the artist, who has published eight books of his drawings and paintings, and whose works have been displayed at major galleries.
It's also a bright signal that he is not ready for retirement. Dylan, 80, has survived drug addiction, relentless media scrutiny, stalker-like invasions of his personal privacy, and a devastating divorce that he sang about painfully in his 1974 magnum opus Blood on the Tracks.
And in the spring of 1997, Bob was knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door when he nearly died from a bacterial heart infection.
Now, in the autumn of his life, he no longer plays guitar onstage, alternating between a piano console and upright microphone.
This is an ironic twist of fate for a folksinger who set down his acoustic guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, strapped on an electric Stratocaster, and inspired all popular musicians beginning with The Beatles to write songs that were more serious, stream-of-conscience, and lyrically sophisticated.
But Bob can still play a mean harmonica, as he demonstrated for the Windy City crowd during a haunting interlude to "Soon After Midnight," a Fifties doo-wop turned murder ballad from his widely acclaimed 2012 album Tempest.
Mr. Dylan, who has been criticized for sometimes not addressing his audiences, proudly introduced his band members, adding, "We love Chicago just like you do."
And to show their affection, they performed two encores, the self-explanatory "Love Sick" off of Dylan's 1997 critical comeback album Time Out of Mind, and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," a world-weary blues song with a positive upbeat tempo, from 1965's groundbreaking Highway 61 Revisited.
Aside from the blessing of again getting to see an artist for the ages who changed the course of culture and music, the most poignant part of this magnificent concert was the simple joy of watching an elderly gentleman doing what he loves for the enjoyment of those who loved him back after each song with warm applause.
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